SHAFAQNA- At a ceremony of presenting 2014 government awards to mass media workers on Tuesday Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev remembered the journalists who lost their lives while on duty last year.

As he addressed an audience of mass media workers at the government’s reception house Medvedev named the Russian journalists who were killed while performing their journalistic duties — Andrei Stenin, Igor Kornelyuk, Anatoly Klyan and Anton Voloshin, “whose sole weapon was the camera.”

“According to estimates by the international organization Reporters without Borders, last year alone 66 journalists were killed while doing their job,” Medvedev said.

He touched upon the theme of the Paris terrorist attack to have expressed support on behalf of all those present for the relatives and dear ones of the killed staffers of Charlie Hebdo magazine.

“The international community has expressed its attitude to what has happened. I believe that other commentaries would be just inappropriate,” he remarked.

All this shows that journalists’ words have tremendous power, he concluded. “Journalism remains one of the most socially important professions.”